Demon Scrawls
by Blitz-chan
Summary: Of a demoness who is never allowed much of the limelight. Of one page, and words only that demoness may read.
1. Default Chapter

  
And these sisters are represented through mythology as well as tales of the old times; if not also mythology called in themselves; three loosely-packed, leather-bound, ancient books, hidden in dusty corners of libraries only the old and feeble visit anymore. They are three again - of the Fates, of the Norn, and now of humanity, the one race that is governed either tightly or liberally by the former two, in respective terms. And they are three one last time: three problems and menaces to a member of the opposite equilibrium.  
Look into that library for just a moment; pick up one of those books. The title is faded, yes, and you must run a hand over the cover to actually see it at all, but it's worth the trouble; the title, faded, yes, concealed, yes, reads PRESENT. Not the 'gift' sort of present, mind, but the 'time' sort of present. The letters are elegantly looped, yet small, and excessively plain. This book demands immediate attention.  
But do not read - no, not now. Wait.  
Pick up the book that was previously leaning against PRESENT. This book - oh, if the librarian saw it she'd have a fit - is dog-eared on nearly every page, weather beaten, caked in dust and age grime. I know it might be unpleasant, but scrape away that nasty stuff with the hem of your shirt, and hold the book up to the light; should there not be any light, walk into another room. It won't kill you.  
Ah, yes. Isn't it pretty?  
The title is hurried, the words and letters bunched together; painted a bright, mocking crimson, fighting admirably against the dust. Beautiful, lustrous. The title is, of course, PAST.  
And there is one more book. It rests alone, though closer to PRESENT than PAST, and its cover is not worn by dust or even so much by age as it is fingerprints. It is still very old, but a favored copy. Its title, the words and letters evenly spaced, the distance absolutely precise, was obviously written with something other than a human or divine hand. It is FUTURE.  
Now you hold all three books. And let me enlighten you - you hold time, you hold love, you hold promises broken and renewed, you hold the universe and its many whorls right within your palms. You hold three wishes.  
Oh, but what is this? Shift your fingers slightly, and you will feel, taped either to the back of PAST or FUTURE, a minute rise from the cover. Turn either book over; ah, I almost forgot. Pull the tape off. It shouldn't be hard, as it is probably ages older than you are, and very brittle. A small, manual-fashioned thing should separate from the book.  
Now you hold in one palm the universe, and in the other, the commodities of necessary living. Don't you feel special?  
Oh, come now! Don't stand there dumbly! Read the title of the manual - it's not all that hard of a word, is it? Ah, that's right. Now we're getting somewhere. The writing is so very small, isn't it? So very quiet; whispered, secretive, and a light, demanding lavender. FOREVER, it reads softly.  
What are you to do with FOREVER, dear reader?  
You'll open it - and to no specified page, since they are all blank, save one near the middle, and it, tucked into the spine eons ago, dislodges itself and drifts lazily to the floor. Bend and grasp that old, yellowed page, reader. Rise and hold it up to your previous light source; turn it over and back to its front again. You may not read the writing - humans are ignorant and unaware of this language, these scrawled words that seem to mean so much. They spill frantically over the page as if chased by unrestrained evil; as if, when thought about, the writer was running out of time to compose those very words.  
And there is no title to this small piece of the universe, just a signature. There is no heading, no explanation, no footnotes or definitions. Simply a signature.  
--Marller.  
You are grasping the torment of a woman - a Marked demon - scorned by her family, and mocked by her second people. You are grasping a small note; a mere edge of her diary, or what she cared to call her diary. You are grasping a million agonies, and a long, loud, earsplitting howl that was never uttered.  
Don't you wish you could read it?  
Yes. I wish so too.  
  
  
  



	2. Demon Scrawls -- To Truly Begin

I will begin by saying that the main character in this story, a demoness by the name of Marller, is not and never was the type to put words down on paper. Maybe that is a bad beginning, eh? Oh well; you can't say it isn't true. This demoness, Marller, preferred the more closed side of life - or the rougher lifestyle. But then, she had pretty good reasons.  
  
She was a demon, for one, and demons were not made to spend their time hunched precariously over a piece of paper, an eraser sliding weakly over an upper or bottom lip, fingers spaced and absently tracing the little blue lines. Two, she was... Marller. Marller performed none of the above without a knife at her throat and a foot in her stomach, all because of her name and what words on paper might do to that name.  
  
Three, and the last reason. You should note, reader, that the number three will be appearing quite often in this story, however beside the point that is - onward, three. Marller, truly, did not know how to put words down on paper. Oh, she could read efficiently enough, and write as well, but to be open - to be so careless as to place thoughts in places where others might read them! -- certainly not. She could write equations with jaw-dropping ease, she could eye a formula and have it simplified in an instant, but she could not pour her mind into a pencil and transfer it to that accursed piece of paper, whether it be lined, blank, or yellowed, for her thoughts were hers, and no one else's.  
  
Marller did not long to write, however. She was an amazingly simple demoness: she fought as her blood commanded her to, she despised nearly every relation she possessed, and, most importantly, she enjoyed stroking the fires of annoyance in almost any heart besides her own. She kept her secrets and emotions in a small locked box at the back of her mind - she had the only key.  
  
Yet, even though Marller's inability to put words on paper seems so far to be the main point of our story, the demoness wasn't thinking about it at the moment. No; to be precise, she was thinking of something she craved much, much more than to correct her inability - and she wasn't aware, remember, that she possessed any inability thus far.  
  
Marller craved food.  
  
It was the perfect time to settle down for lunch as well. Not quite noon but well past eleven, those slaving behind counters and in front of stoves prepared for their midday break, and students in schools thrummed their fingers anxiously upon the surfaces of their cold wooden desks, ready to rush through the door and into the sun. Sensei appeared slightly anxious as well, but then, that is human nature - originally a people spread over the surface of a rugged, fresh planet, the first even mildly sentient race had no more shelter than a tree or an overhang, so the primary instinct was to be where the sun could be felt on shoulders.  
  
Marller's primary instinct was to get out of that same sun and find something to place in her mouth, chew, swallow, and then, finally, appease her tortured stomach.  
  
She had been searching for sustenance for a few hours now, and discovered the hard way just how one obtained food at the many stations established for dining purposes without money: one ordered, then, after the manager found that there was no money to pay for the meal, one went without gathering sustenance to the kitchen and washed dishes for three hours. Her fingers were still just barely wrinkled from the experience.  
  
The manager would be in the hospital for much longer.  
  
And now, not caring to have a mob of screaming people after her, Marller trudged towards nothing down this hot and barren city street, shoving every now and then past someone who either wanted her attention or just brushed her shoulder to be annoying. Being rather irritable without a full stomach, Marller too often assumed the latter and, suddenly, found herself nose-to-nose with a woman who looked, to say the least, bookwormish.   
  
Marller nudged forward, and the woman nudged back, slanting amber-rimmed eyes and pursing small, delicate lips. Marller lifted one of her own and revealed to this upstart mortal a gleaming fang - she was hungry and in no mood to play pride games. No mood at all.  
  
"Gomen ne, but you ran into me. I'm waiting for an apology," came the tart line from the woman, and Marller bristled. Now she was hungry, short on time that was really nonexistent, and peeved. Oh, extremely peeved. And as far as she was concerned, the manager of that ill-smelling restaurant was about to have a roommate.   
  
But her soon-to-be backhand slap was halted by the loud snarl of protest that reverberated through her stomach and paused hotly in the cavern of her upper throat. She managed a gasp and put one hand to her infuriated abdomen, her teeth clenched. She ground them and gazed at the woman; her expression was one of attempted impassivity, but the strained jaw and the deft movements easily traced the lines of the mask.  
  
"Oh," said the woman, "is that why you're being so rude?" At Marller's noncommittal grunt (which probably meant, "Get the hell the hell away from me; I'm always like this," I figure), she smiled and continued, "Well, I too know the pains of an unsatisfied stomach. And I have an extra sandwich. Would you like it?"  
  
Note, reader, that Marller, under any other circumstance, would have directed a real snarl towards this stranger, administered the backhand, and stalked off, completely unconcerned of the consequences her actions might spawn - and she'd have stolen the sandwich. Now she raised her eyebrows, the firmly clipped, sandy things, and cautiously lowered the lip she had pulled skyward earlier, hiding the fang once more. The woman had not seemed at all perturbed by its existence - why should she use it if there were no eschewing returns?  
  
"Will I have to wash dishes?" she asked almost reluctantly.  
  
From the woman there was an incredulous blink, then a peal of soft, rising laughter, as if many bells were being rung at once and one was trying to sort out which toll belonged with what clapper and side. She responded, "No. We'll use napkins. You will have to be quiet, though." And the woman turned, a hand outstretched - she cut a wide arc through the air with it, over and just under a tall impressive building, on the steps of which they were standing. She spread her fingers, planting the index and middle upon her upper lip. "This is a library, after all."  
  
Well, Marller thought, it doesn't look much like a library. She squinted, eyeing the four ridged columns that rose to support the domed roof, and the ornate wings that stretched behind the building on either side. The pillars were red; the wings, a polished white. What it looked like, she concluded, was an attempted nightclub. She turned her penetrating, accusing gaze on the woman, and smiled when she took a hesitant step back - oh, it was delicious, her sudden hesitance; her sudden fear.  
  
The demoness leaned forward to better inspect this woman: she was almost equal in height to Marller herself, and balanced neatly on the thin line between mildly attractive and pretty. While Marller continued her pursuit, she leaned increasingly backwards - a stumble, and the demoness caught her thin wrist between two strong fingers. She glared into the amber-rimmed eyes tolerantly; morose almost, they were. Odd tone of the spectrum for a mortal to possess - but nevertheless...  
  
"I don't do quiet," Marller said simply. She pulled the woman up and sent her under her right arm with a weak push, then let the appendage drop with a barely audible sigh. The offer had been extremely tempting - and very sudden. She scowled, her eyes on the end of the street. People just didn't up and send an invitation to lunch fresh on the sidewalk.  
  
Yet, one step later, Marller became aware of a sharp tug at her middle, then gasped - during a second step - when the sharp tug became an all-out pull. She glanced down, snarling, then whirled; that fool human was pulling her belt! The thin metal strand was caught between her fingers - and Marller, furious, bent to deal with those figures in the most painful way.  
  
She met a sandwich.  
  
Instinctively she clamped her fangs over it and chewed, reveling in the taste; it wasn't wonderful, but it was food if anything, and Marller had wanted food. She raised a hand and pulled the remaining portion from her mouth - her eyes were on the woman again, slanted, inquiring.   
  
And there was no return from the woman save a muted smile. She asked softly, "You were going to hit me, weren't you?"  
  
Marller swallowed. "Nah. I was going to bite you."  
  
"But you got the sandwich instead."  
  
"Mmm," Marller growled around another piece of her meal.   
  
"And will you try to bite me after you finish it?"  
  
"Try?" came the snort.  
  
The woman was silent. She looked for a long moment at Marller - not into her eyes, mind, that was too dramatic, and not particularly at her face, either. At Marller. Then she spun on her heel, strode quickly - if purposefully - up the steps of the library, yanked open one of the double doors, and hurried inside. The clack of sharp-edged shoes on linoleum rang in Marller's ears and nudged anxiously at the space behind her eyes; it was another tug, if not a smaller, less aggressive one than that which had been administered a few moments before, and she regarded it through half-lidded mental eyes.  
  
Oh, that woman was not going to get away with having the last (unspoken) word. Marller would take her tongue and shove it somewhere so very polite - when angered, the demoness was Hell with a cape and two feet. When challenged, she was... well... she was very, very good at winning challenges. Let's just leave it at that.  
  
She threw back her head and laughed softly, maniacally - this was followed by something that might've been a war cry in the barbed, guttural language called Norse, and then Marller smiled. It was a rather fangy smile, this one, complete with the deadly wrinkles about the eyes and the mischievous feline curve to the lips. A black cape swished, boots thudded once, twice, three times upon stone steps, many metal ringlets jingled crisply, and Marller had crossed the threshold of the double doors - crossed into the library and disappeared.  
  
A delivery man who had watched the entire event fold out collapsed into convulsions and was later picked up by the mysterious Men in White.  
  
  
  
  



	3. Demon Scrawls -- First Glimpse and Grasp

There, beyond the double doors of a library that doesn't look like a library, lies nothing more than an endless expanse of nothing - of things waiting to happen, of inspiration, of doubt and truth and knowledge unborn. All nothing. And there is a desk situated in the center of this nothing; the beginning and the end of something, this desk is. A woman is seated at the desk, her chin propped in her hands, her hands attached to her arms, her arms to her elbows, and so on. Her eyes are amber-rimmed, shaded by soft sienna-brown hair that travels forever into the nothingness. She is smiling at the demoness that paused only so many feet away - yes, just beyond the doors, when her feet left the linoleum and touched the nothingness. The demoness is now nothing herself: a statue, a figurine bare of expression and emotional litany, her lips parted in surprise, her eyes closed with the strain of a thousand voices whispering, whispering, whispering - and she can no longer grasp what they are saying. She can no longer hear them.  
  
The smile the woman wears is not triumphant, however. It twitches almost downward; a grim, foreboding, tight-lipped smirk. She stands, drifting easily over her desk and the nothingness to hover in front of the stone demoness, watching, her hands spaced only two or three inches from the immobile, opposing face. She cups a cheek with one hand, and presses the mark upon the demoness's forehead with the other. A high keen can be heard as the nothingness retreats - rushes to hide and recollect itself in the place of its origin - and spreads over the demoness. The mark, the horrible V, gleams brightly for a moment, and the demoness falls forward in the company of a soft, barely audible sigh.  
  
The woman lowers her to her knees, glaring at the mark; she hates it so, but even she cannot repel the sigil of the First. She does not remove her hand even as the demoness begins to push herself back into the realm of something - past the nothing, past mortal limitations and more so. The demoness murmurs incoherently; a sigh from the woman, and she waits.  
  
In which we begin again.  
  
...Marller blinked, her memories dodging through her head as if they were playing some sort of senseless game. She grabbed and arranged them, screaming, into a slight theory of recollection: no food, pushy lady, sudden food, no food, no pushy lady, followed pushy lady. Ah.  
  
While the edges of her memories were still blurred, she could piece together enough to know that she was in a place she wasn't supposed to be - a place full of old things; a place that swept out new things. She also knew that the mortal she had followed what seemed like a few moments ago into this building, this hell of a library, was far too close to her for even the most remote sense of comfort. With a strained snarl she leapt back and away from the woman - her lips were pulled freshly over her fangs, exposing nearly every one she possessed, and her hands she had pushed forward. Both of them glimmered faintly with amoral energy; if one had looked closely, they might have noticed that her booted feet did not touch the floor.  
  
"You!" she spat furiously. "Onore, oraka no majo!"  
  
"I'd stop," the woman said promptly, "to think of who you're calling a witch and why."   
  
Marller did not stop. Marller, far beyond any reasoning, did not listen, either.   
  
And that is why, dear readers, Marller ran headlong into the nothingness and was consumed because the only emotion in her heart was hatred.  
  
At first, she was aware of something slowing her down - the woman smiled mockingly, so very far away. Flying was becoming a problem, for she could no longer seem to hold herself upright or steady, and her eyelids were suddenly leaden. The world spun and dipped crazily to one side; the demoness careened into the floor and cried out sluggishly, clawing weakly at her forehead. The Mark was burning.  
  
She could find no words for this pain: it was a rending emotion that seared the top of her heart and brushed her soul; it was the touch of the cosmos on a fingertip; it was the world dropped into oblivion and drawn out through a straw, molecule by millionth molecule. Marller longed to scream, to throw back her head and howl, fangs gleaming, her semi-gloved hands at her sides, clenched into tight fists.  
  
"Yamete!" she gasped, breathless. Her vision swam. "Yamete da!"  
  
"And will you call me a witch again, witch?"  
  
"S-s-s-stop it-t-t-t-t..."  
  
The nothingness flared. White light exploded around the edges of the room that Marller had, as of yet, only glimpsed, and the demoness was finally able to scream. It was a wild, piercing cry; a high keen of despair and desperation - and it was true. With truth the nothingness could not survive, and it ran, this time to cover the light around the edges of the room. Time locked gingerly over the situation - Marller, half-curled into a ball on the floor of the supposed library, and the woman, the Lord of the Nothingness itself. And the whispers.  
  
A thousand voices rushing in from all sides - mere fragments of them, nonsensical pieces of words and stories and memories long dead. Flashes of ancient smiles; prehistoric eyes, faded and warped with age. Of love and golden necklaces left on porch rails in the sun and lemonade glasses and misted mountains oh it hurts it hurts it hurts stop please I'm sorry help me someone please I didn't mean to spill the juice okaasan I'll mop it up immediately don't hit me Urudo it was your fault stupid ball sorry kid no time right now maybe next time oh it hurts stop it please... it hurts... it... hurts...   
  
And time paused, if only for the briefest moment. The woman pressed her hand to the mark on Marller's forehead and found it very cold indeed. She sighed, her hair traveling forever into the nothingness, and with her free hand removed the reading spectacles that had before been balanced on the bridge of her nose. She placed them in her breast pocket.   
  
"You will not call me a witch again," said Peorth softly.  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
It was a long time, late into the evening, before Marller opened her eyes and squinted blearily at the candle on her bedside table. Even that tiny amount of light caused a dull twinge of pain directly between her temples and she hissed, silencing the candle with two dark fingers. Wisps of soft purple smoke drifted lazily about those fingers, twining around knuckles and various other joints in a furor of the last moments of life granted to them. The demoness growled and settled back slightly, heavily leaning upon one arm. The other was oddly numb.  
  
She sniffed, her nostrils flaring suddenly, and glared into the darkness at the still smoldering candlewick. She shook her hand and pulled it away from the smoke - lilac-scented and touched oh-so-gingerly with a bit of ancient rendering, she could not help but do so. It burned.  
  
Marller looked in all directions nervously, her hands trailing to her ears: but no longer did the whispers flow madly into them. No longer did the horrible memories that certainly were not of her creation plague her ragged subconscious. Under the sheets on the bed the shadows of her feet moved upwards, abruptly being drawn to her torso. She hugged them, resting her chin on one cap in a rare moment of helplessness and innocent curiosity. Everywhere the darkness seethed, shifted, but she paid it no mind - it was an old thing, a common occurrence, this seething and shifting. She dealt with it daily in Niflheim.  
  
But then, she could always surface; she could always leave Niflheim if she wished to. No longer. Eyes slanted, she picked out the features of the room in which she had been placed: the bed (her bed), a small desk, an equally small bookcase packed from top to bottom with manuscripts of every shape and size, and a door arranged in the opposing wall. Once her eyes found the door they did not stray from it - that was what she wanted; that was her way out.  
  
Her feet touched the floor, now a destination given to them from a mind holding finally a grip on reality. Marller was cautious, so very cautious, in sliding over the aforementioned floor: her movements were liquid, her soul shielded by a myriad of blocking spells, her hands and fingers ready to catch even the slightest threat and grind it into a fine powder. The demoness was truly a demoness now - no more games, no more jokes, no more sandwiches and soft words. No more supple curves, quirked lips, mutely glittering fangs.   
  
The mark was no longer cold.  
  
Marller grasped the doorknob and twisted it savagely. The door opened without even the slightest protest and the demoness flung herself, snarling and spitting, into the corridor beyond it, eyes blazing in fury unrestrained. To anyone, anything, she was Hell; she was Niflheim and something so much more, her movements and makings perfectly tuned to the fierce heart beating behind her ribcage, cradled in arms of muscle and tendons alike. She found herself in this corridor, you see, and moved through it in the time it takes to drawn one breath; and back again was the demoness on two. Underlying her steps were more of them - she was in two places at once, exploring, penetrating, blowing through things to get out Get Out GET OUT and yet there was no exit. None whatsoever.  
  
So this demoness paused to breathe herself, in the middle of this corridor, dear readers, and when she looked down, discovered that she had moved but an inch over a cold stone floor. You might say that she was... highly miffed.  
  
You might want to guarantee that she was beginning to realize just how bad her day was becoming.  
When one does not move more than an inch, even when full power is exhibited and that power is definitely demonic, in a plane considered to be mortal, one will come to the conclusion that the plane is indeed not mortal, but something else. Marller considered. No, not divine - the place would be decorated with little twinkling lights and bells if it were divine, after all; not demonic - she'd be having a blast, then; already cleared that it wasn't mortal.  
  
Well, blast it and bloody hell with all the toppings. This was just _not_ a good day.  
  
And then _that_ voice slid into her ears again - not the thousand whispers, no - and she flinched. She knew that voice, now; she knew the years of sorrow and love it carried under its many, many folds. She knew its depth, its length, its utter personality or lack of it thereof.  
  
"Majo."  
The voice again, speaking its staple language. "No, but so close, demoness. How nice of you to drop by for a visit."  
  
Marller was silent, for she could do naught but listen. Forever was Forever - a sister to Eternity, a cousin to Infinity, and interwoven with Divinity. Despite her temper and the fury that seethed endlessly now in that heart behind her ribcage, and despite her lack of knowledge for who this person really was, she would not meddle in her affairs willingly. Such would be like tampering with God's Briefcase.  
  
"To leave," Peorth continued, "you must walk, not run. You must truly wish to leave. You must abandon all curiosities and doubts. You must trust."  
  
To explain Peorth: she _is_ Forever. She is not Eternity, Infinity, or Divinity, she is not God. She appears as a young woman with hair that never ends once in a realm of her possession -- a woman with amber-rimmed eyes and a tight, if not true, smile. A woman wearing little, for Forever hides little, and hands that speak. A voice that listens. Ears and eyes that feel.  
  
Forever is Forever. And Forever knows demons better than she knows anything else.  
  
"But you will not trust, will you, demoness?"   
  
"Not you."  
  
"Not one of your kind?"  
  
"You are not of my kind!" Marller spat, whirling to the goddess angrily. To the demoness Peorth was not a goddess, but a witch walking on the thin line between hatred and BURN-BURN-BURN in her subconscious. She was not Forever to Marller. And she would not be Forever to Marller, note, reader, for quite a while.   
  
Peorth frowned, pouting cutely. She approached Marller and walked around her to better observe her from the front, rather than the back -- oh, she was quiet and demonstrative, this goddess, more so than anyone might believe. Her eyes flashed, their centers shadowed and shaded with a deep brown. So sure of herself was Peorth.  
  
"Then what do you plan to do, hm?"  
  
Marller returned, after a moment, in the way of, "What do you want with me?"  
  
While momentarily stunned by the quick change of pace, Peorth blinked behind the spectacles she had recently donned once more and tilted her head. "You will not cooperate, then?"  
  
"Cooperate with what?" came the slightly-incredulous retort. "You've given me no terms, no lines; nothing but a sandwich and a blast of power I really didn't want. You expect trust after _that_?" The demoness lifted an eyebrow. "The sandwich wasn't that good anyway."  
  
"Do shut up about the sandwich," Peorth growled. She tugged at her spectacles for a moment, adjusting them, then sighed, gingerly scratching a temple. "Well now, demoness, you want terms? You want my reason for being here?"  
  
Marller nodded.  
  
"Eh. All right." Peorth leaned forward -- Marller took a few steps back, you can be assured -- and whispered softly into Marller's ear, "I'm here to grant you a wish, demoness. But one: the thing you most want in life, however ridiculous, however enormously impossible it may seem to you. Just one wish."  
  
Marller stared incredulously/dubiously at Peorth for perhaps a full thirty seconds.  
  
And then burst into high, shrieking laughter.  
  
After two minutes of this annoying carry-on, Peorth snapped forcefully, "What? You don't believe me?"  
  
"*Mwehehehebwahaha!*"  
  
"If you would just shut up for a moment and _listen_ to me," Peorth snarled hotly, "you might learn something!" And with that said, the goddess reached forward and seized Marller's chin in her hand, hauling her forward with strength belied by her small form. Her lips curled upward into a half-snarl, Peorth jerked Marller's head down: eye to eye, demoness and goddess, locked in a battle of both wills and relations unknown by one participant.  
  
Marller stopped laughing, although every so often an absent chuckle would drift aimlessly past her lips. Finally she composed herself, her eyes glittering with liquid mirth, and said, "All right. You amuse me, majo; I'll listen. But not for long."  
  
But Marller did not have to listen, for, traveling from those eyes and into her own were not quite memories, but something else -- something secretive and ghostly. She squinted mentally, mulling over the images she received: of a silver blur rushing between shadows; of a broken pen, and cold, white fingers, clenching this pen, blood seeping from a palm and to the point to write upon yellow paper. The words she could not read.   
  
"What is this?" she wondered coarsely; frightened she was not of mere pictures. Marller lived in Niflheim. Daily she was exposed to the worst kinds of torture -- administered it, too, at odd moments -- ever invented by either the human or demonic race; a trickle of blood was nothing. Nothing in the way of disgust; curiosity, on the other hand, was a completely different issue.  
  
Marller was intensely interested in these pictures, dear reader. She'd been rather bored, lately, you see -- Keiichi was being his usual gutless self, murmuring to Belldandy his love and his apologies upon every eve. She was warned away from the temple by that damn robot increasingly as well; she was sick of having kindly pedestrians pull wards from her face and upper torso in the park. She was sick of dealing with the accusing stare of that irritating mecha-brat and the soul-twisting smile that one goddess always seemed to possess. She was sick of those haunting green eyes...  
  
And *click* went the opposing mind. Marller did not hear it, feel it, see it; did not know a *click* even happened in that span of three whole milliseconds. But abruptly she was released and seized again; tossed through corridors, moving feet, yards, meters, where she alone would have only moved inches, and into the lobby where the whispers flowed through the air like so many errant breezes. She felt them -- heard them -- only a moment; and after, was out on stone steps and under the soft haze of a purple Japanese sunset.   
  
And the woman, Peorth, the witch, removed her hands from Marller's shoulders. She stepped away from the demoness.  
  
"One wish to a demon does not come without payment," came the soft claim. Peorth turned to walk in the opposite direction, calling over her shoulder, "But, if you are willing to make that payment, demoness, come back tomorrow. We'll do lunch."  
  
Marller blinked, and the library disappeared.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
